


Go Not To The Elves For Council

by fascinationex



Series: SDV fics by fascinationex [2]
Category: Stardew Valley (Video Game)
Genre: Other, mermaids are just deep ones out of context, player OC and Krobus live together in xenophiliac domestic bliss don't @ me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-02
Updated: 2020-01-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:34:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22087996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fascinationex/pseuds/fascinationex
Summary: "It's not good for humans to keep jewellery they get from the ocean," he said, with surprising certainty for a guy who didn't know that much about humans on a good day.
Relationships: Krobus/Player (Stardew Valley)
Series: SDV fics by fascinationex [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1602052
Comments: 22
Kudos: 249





	Go Not To The Elves For Council

_Dirty but still beautiful. On the side is a flowing script thought by some to be the ancient language of the elves. No Elvish bones have ever been found._ — Elvish Jewelry.

* * *

"Where did you find this?" Krobus wondered. 

It was late autumn, and outside it was raining like the sky was falling -- a perfect day for Krobus to wander out to the shed and poke around. He didn't like to leave the farm, now that he'd moved in. Nesting instinct, he said. Erin wasn't sure if he was joking. 

"...I don't mean that you might have taken it from somebody," he added. His shadowy face shifted, smoky and ragged, into an arrangement that seemed to express concern. "I don't think you'd do that." 

"Oh... That circlet?" Erin looked at what he was very carefully not holding onto. It was a circle of gleaming, unidentifiable metal, which merged smoothly into the setting of a gem and away again into its shape without any indication of metalsmithing. The circle was perfect and sleek, and the metal band was just as perfectly round, curious for something so old. On the side was a flowing script she couldn't read -- and which made her unsettled to look at for too long. 

It was beautiful, but very alien. And if she looked at it for too long, Erin knew she could lose hours just staring at its perfect circles and unsettlingly compelling form. She had put it on a shelf in her shed and, mostly, forgotten about it. 

"I hooked it when I was fishing," she explained, looking away from the circlet and back to Krobus. He was, in his own way, perhaps a bit unsettling too. There was a coil of shadowy body mass that stuck up from his head like a bizarre antenna. Usually when he looked at her, it was curled up, and sometimes it wiggled happily -- but now it was straight and stiff, like the ones on the shadow brutes who would attack in the deep mines. "I found another one very similar, which I donated to the museum. Gunther said it's some kind of... old elvish jewellery. Like, really old. You can touch it if you want," she added. 

"It's in the shed?" Krobus asked cautiously. He did not touch it. "Don't humans keep things to look at in their homes?" 

He drew his gaze away to look at her instead. The shadowy antenna turned soft and wavy. 

Erin shifted uncomfortably on her heels. "I guess... I used to dream about it when I kept it in the house. Silly stuff, nothing really scary or anything -- Wearing it into the water, singing to it. It's babyish," she admitted, "but I prefer to keep it out here." 

She covered her mouth when she laughed, soft and a little embarrassed. There was a pepper rex in her chicken coop but -- sure, the fancy elvish jewellery gave her bad dreams! Erin didn't like feeling like a coward about something so small and dumb, but at least she was only saying it to Krobus. He wouldn't care.

"That's not babyish at all," Krobus disagreed. "There's a reason something like this only washes up from the water... Erin... you're pretty sturdy, but I think you should give it to Rasmodius instead."

Erin was surprised. "The wizard?" _Of course, Erin, because there are so many other people named Rasmodius in the valley._ She shook her head at herself. "Why?"

The smoky holes where whatever passed for Krobus's eyes lay glinting shifted direction briefly, giving her the distinct and curiously human impression of a gaze darting nervously away. "It's not good for humans to keep jewellery they get from the ocean," he said, with surprising certainty for a guy who didn't know that much about humans on a good day. 

"Okay?" Erin frowned. "If it bothers you, we can give it to him? Here, let me --" 

His shadowy hand stopped her arm, not soft and warm like it usually felt -- this time, it gripped her like the bizarre lovechild of miasma and hot steel. She stopped short. He was stronger than her. The shadow people always were.

"Don't... touch it with your skin." 

"...Okay," she agreed. When it came to strange artefacts of uncertain provenance, perhaps Krobus knew best, after all. He was a shadow person; void magic was what he was made of. "I'll get -- the milk pail?"

"That sounds good," Krobus said. He didn't follow her with his soft-glowing stare while she moved back towards the door of the shed -- his attention remained locked on the jewellery. 

But when she came back with the pail, his form still hissed and shifted restlessly. 

"What is it?" she asked, as he watched her nudge it into the pail with the side of her axe. 

It clattered, a noise that seemed vastly disproportionate to the actual distance it fell, echoing strangely in the dim shed. It wasn't the tinkling sound of delicate jewellery she'd been expecting either -- it was flat and hard sounding, and rang in her ears like a bell. 

"I probably shouldn't tell you, but..." Krobus's shadowy body hissed restlessly again. "Just so you know. Gunther... what he said. He's wrong." 

Her eyebrows rose.

There was a pause. They looked at each other over the dented pail and the ancient jewellery, and the shadows hissed and writhed, giving off soft whisps of dark steam.

He didn't say anything else, and she could glean nothing from his expression. 

"I'll take this to the tower now," she said. 

"It's dark enough today. I can feed the animals?" Krobus offered. 

"That'd be a big help, but don't push yourself." She smiled, then teased: "We can't have you getting sunlight sick again." 

"Ah..." The twist of shadow atop his head drooped. "I'm sorry... I won't let it happen again. I know it was inconvenient..."

Erin wasn't sure if it was shadow people or just Krobus, but he never responded quite right to even the gentlest teasing. "It's not the inconvenience," she said, instead of pursuing it. "I just don't want you to get sick."

She wasn't surprised when his funky little shadow antenna twitched up again and gave a hesitatant little wiggle. For a creature so different from a human, it was fascinating how similar he could be. 

Every social animal wanted to be cared for.

Erin reached out with her unoccupied hand and let her fingers run through the ragged shadowform where a human shoulder might be. She did not know what Krobus felt, but she knew her fingers felt feverish heat and softness, and that he leaned right into her touch. 

"I'll be back in an hour or two," she said. 

"Be careful." 

"Sure." 

'Be careful' -- a strange thing to say, when she was just walking down through the trees. 

The walk through the forest was quiet -- no Jas running around getting her purple frock filthy, laughing and playing, and no travelling cart today. Anybody with any sense was probably keeping out of the driving rain. Erin saw boot prints that looked as though they'd been pacing in circles by the mud at the water's edge. Maybe Elliot had been here, earlier, murmuring to himself while he tried to think through another plot hole.

The wizard's tower was, in Erin's humble opinion, exactly what a wizard's tower should be: crumbling stone, climbing Vines and flowers, perched atop a hill like an ancient, picturesque folly. It was, however, sturdier than it looked. She'd been inside Leah's little cabin, once, and that was crumbling a lot faster than the wizard's tower.

"Hmm," he said, when she knocked and then barged in with her pail. 

He stroked his purple beard, eyeing it thoughtfully -- and not very happily. "You were right to bring it to me. Where did you get it?" He looked sharply from the jewellery to her. "Not swimming?" 

"Fishing," Erin said. 

"Hmph." He took the whole pail off her and dumped it out over the centre of a huge design carved right into his floor. The jewellery glimmered in the light, smooth and seamless and startlingly beautiful despite the dirt. Rasmodius then unceremoniously flung a sheet of fabric over the top of it, hiding it from view.

"But," she said slowly, "I found another, months ago. I gave it to the museum. To Gunther? He said the ancient elves made it."

"Elves," said Rasmodius, not very promisingly. "No. There's no such thing as elves." 

But there were dwarves and goblins and shadow people like Krobus, weren't there? Why were elves so different?

The wizard whirled on her, all startling purple and black, cloak fluttering and eyes alight with some strange, febrile feeling. "Why did you bring this to me, today?"

She hesitated. Lied. "I was going to give it to Krobus. As a gift. I thought he'd like it." He liked diamonds from her crystalarium. It wasn't that far fetched. "He said to bring it here instead."

"Krobus," repeated Rasmodius. "The shadow person... I see." His expression said that maybe he did, and she felt wariness sink in her belly. "Erin, for a farmer, you spend a great deal of time in the sewers, do you not?" 

The sewers. Right. Erin's relationship with Krobus was getting into territory she categorically didn't want to discuss, not even with a comparatively enlightened wizard. She didn't want either a 'concerned' mob of humans on her doorstep _or_ some kind of terrifying shadow brute intervention.

"Uhh..." Rasmodius's eyes were staring right through her. She didn't feel comfortable lying again -- something in her belly said he'd know, and then there'd really be trouble. "Listen... he just said I shouldn't touch it again and I should bring it to you."

There was a short, slightly hostile silence. Rasmodius stared hard at her, and the wind whistled maddeningly through the crumbling stone of his tower. If the cold draught or the noise bothered him at all, he didn't show it. 

Finally, he shook his head and sighed. "I hope _one_ of you knows what you're doing," was all he said to that. "As for the jewellery -- yes. You were right to bring it to me. And I will be going to talk to Gunther about the piece in his collection this very day, although I'm sure he won't give it up without a fight. You may leave."

Erin did not. "If you don't mind, why is it so dangerous? Is it... not just a circlet?" 

"Elves," Rasmodius repeated again, shaking his head and sending his purple hair flying around his face. "The dwarves and goblins came from their own realms, many many years ago, and the elves didn't follow them -- as far as human life is concerned, elves do not exist. It is why we find no remains from them. The creatures Gunther has no doubt read about, in muddy academic record, and which he mistakenly calls 'elves'... those are as native to our world as you or I." There was a short pause. "Do you wade into the ocean? Have you heard the song, when you go out to the water?"

He said it like it should be capitalised, like she would know exactly what he meant: The Song. She shook her head. 

"Good. If you do hear it... leave. And don't go back." Another pause, and then he barked: "And spend less time in the sewers!"

And that was all he would say. 

Erin left, feeling dissatisfied and confused. 

That night, Krobus climbed into bed next to her, so light the mattress didn't even move and so gentle that all she felt was the hot spread of his shadowy form spreading over her hip, dripping down the curve of her waist. 

Erin cracked her eyes open, but all she saw was black. She wasn't sure if it was just that there were clouds over the moon, or if it was his shape leeching all the light from the room.

It didn't matter. She sank her fingers sleepily into his shadow. "Krobus?" she whispered.

His breath, if it was indeed breath, was seething hot where it wafted down her neck. His voice was so low it was almost indistinguishable from the wind outside. "Mother Hydra can't have you."

Despite the heat, she felt the words like a chill. 

Erin whispered back: "Who?" 

He hesitated. Then: "It doesn't matter," he said, although it clearly did. "If you hear the song, tell me. And... I'll drown her out. I'll try."

Erin blinked slowly. She felt warm and safe in the dark, and she really wanted to go back to sleep. "Okay," she agreed blindly.

The shadow fell over her, puddling into a pool of velvety warmth. She relaxed back into it. 

Hot claws dragged gently through her hair. "Mmm, that's nice." 

" _You're_ nice." She could hear the purring vibration in his voice.

She snorted softly, and then went back to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> If there was something you liked, you are very welcome to leave me a comment; otherwise have a good night. :)


End file.
